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LONG VIEW Rick Rubin in the master bedroom of his Malibu home, with natural sisal rugs, seating carved from Indonesian hardwood and Wilson Audio speakers.

Legendary music producer and first-time father Rick Rubin has spent a decade perfecting

his secluded Malibu, California, oasis.

Of f the Record

BY IAN VOLNERPHOTOGRAPHY BY MARTIEN MULDER

SOUND EFFECTS Below, from left: Bob Dylan’s former tour bus has been repurposed as a recording space; it sits on the grounds of the Shangri-La studio, which Rubin now owns.A

COUPLE OF YEARS back, New York–based architects Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski were touring a West Coast client around a recently com-pleted project, a school in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. As they walked

the hallways, their guest remarked on the building’s white epoxy floor; wanting to get a better feel for it, he removed his shoes and began padding around barefoot. When some staff members came upon the shoeless visitor—monklike, his face encircled by a vast nimbus of gray hair—standing placidly amid the corridor crush, they immediately recognized him, Bonetti recalls: “Hey, it’s Rick Rubin!”

At 54, Rubin is arguably the country’s best-known music producer. He’s responsible for that infectious keyboard loop on the Beastie Boys’ “Girls” from 1987 and the warbling guitar in Tom Petty’s 1994 hit “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” A protean force who has made and remade dozens of major recording artists’ careers over the past 34 years, he is also a striking physical presence. Rubin’s signature look has routinely attracted the label of “guru,” though in person his puckish smile and sparkling blue eyes make him seem more like a beachy elf than a stoner sage. He favors baggy shorts, loose-fitting T-shirts and no shoes.

This last condition is a prerequisite for any visitor setting foot in Rubin’s house, high atop a sun-blessed bluff near Malibu’s Point Dume, about an hour north of Los Angeles. Reworked for him over the past decade by Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture, the house—originally an unremarkable neo-Tudor from the 1970s—is an extension of Rubin’s creative process. “There’s no distraction,” the producer says, “nothing to do but focus on work, enjoy nature and be at peace.” In Malibu, Rubin’s life, like his music, is about getting down to basics.

It’s been a long road here. As the founder (in his NYU dorm room) of the storied Def Jam label, the Long Island–born Rubin helped usher hip-hop into the mainstream, in the ’80s, making waves as much for the raw sound of the rappers he brought aboard—old-schoolers like Slick Rick and LL Cool J—as for the brash promotionalism he deployed to expose his art-ists, and himself, to a broader public. In the 1985 film Krush Groove, a fictionalized account of Def Jam’s rise, Rubin plays himself alongside an actor portraying his then–business partner Russell Simmons. Pulling the strings from behind a giant mixing board, Rubin gave the world its first real glimpse of the hip-hop producer.

In 1988, Rubin and Simmons parted ways, and the former launched the Def American Recordings label, then moved out west. His flair for public relations went with him—five years into his new enterprise, Rubin staged an elaborate mock burial, presided over by the Reverend Al Sharpton, for the word def, claiming it had lost its street cred. Since then the rebranded American Recordings has been a showcase for Rubin’s eclectic taste, a hit factory for every-one from Johnny Cash (including his final album, American VI: Ain’t No Grave, recorded in 2002–03) to Jay Z (most notably 2004’s global musical pandemic “99 Problems”). Thus far, the producer has had 18 Grammy nominations and eight wins. Though Rubin is almost universally revered, certain artists, includ-ing Crosby, Stills & Nash, have griped that his attitude

“I found thIs place thInkIng It would be good for spendIng weekends.

I came for the fIrst one and never left.”–rIck rubIn

MAN’S CASTLE Above: Architects Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski inserted modern, boxy spaces into the house’s neo-Tudor framework. Right: Vintage exercise rings hang from the interior of a cedar-paneled turret. Opposite: The sauna and ice bath in a first-floor corridor.

ON TRACK The mixing board at Shangri-La, which Rubin has reworked in a minimalist style similar to that of his nearby home.

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GREATEST HITS Clockwise from above: Rubin recording with Tom Petty and Johnny Cash in 1996; on the cover of the Village Voice in 1986; at a party with Jay Z in 2001; with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis in 1993.

RAP PARTY Clockwise from far left: Rubin with Eminem recording “Berzerk” in 2013; with the Beastie Boys in New York in the 1980s; with Al Teller and LL Cool J in 1986; with his partner, Mourielle Hurtado Herrera, in 2012.

can be off-putting, while some critics have called him out for sacrificing sonic depth to volume.

There was also Rubin’s improbable co-chairman-ship of Sony’s Columbia division in the late aughts: The interlude was productive creatively, but it was an odd match given Rubin’s decidedly uncorporate ethos. Even before it ended, in 2012, the producer had sig-naled his intent to retreat from the industry moil. In the ’90s, Rubin began making regular trips to Malibu, staying in a house he would end up renting for over a decade. “I just loved being here,” he says, and when his rental fell through in 2005, he acquired a nearby one-acre property, on which sat the Disneyesque suburban-style house. “I found this place thinking it would be good for spending weekends,” Rubin recalls. “I came for the first one and never left.”

He’s since created a balance of work and life that keeps the two close enough for organic synthesis but not so close that they infringe on each other. “My house in town [in the Hollywood Hills] had a studio in it, and after that I decided it was too much,” Rubin says. “It’s fine if you’re single and your entire life is focused on the studio. But there’s something really healthy, creatively, about having separation.” On the home front, the environment of domestic chill is more important than ever, given that Rubin and

his partner of seven years, model/actress–turned-farmer Mourielle Hurtado Herrera, have just had their first child, a boy, born in February. “Everyone I’ve talked to about [having a baby] has been very supportive,” Rubin notes. “Some say, ‘Oh, your life is over.’ But the majority think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened.”

PERCHED ON A vast couch in the shady upper-floor library, Rubin describes a design process that unfolded in a way similar to making a record. As in the studio, “everyone pitches in their thoughts,” Rubin says. “Whatever’s the

best idea, the best solution to the problem, wins.” Rubin discovered Bonetti/Kozerski quite by accident, having seen in a magazine a series of wooden chairs the architects created for Donna Karan; he subse-quently learned that they had worked with his friend, the hotelier André Balazs (not to mention Ian Schrager and other high-profile clients). “There’s a richness to what they produce,” Balazs says. “They have a good eye, and they have a very eclectic, European outlook.” Balazs saw that Bonetti/Kozerski’s sense of low-key refinement would complement Rubin’s. The producer agrees: “Some minimal things you don’t want to

touch,” he says, “but Enrico and Dominic’s minimal-ism always feels organic and warm and welcoming.”

Hardly a week has gone by in nearly 10 years that the New York architects have not received a text mes-sage (or several) from Rubin, describing a new idea for a finish, a detail, a floor plan; the duo would counter with their own thoughts, which evolved over time as they understood more and more of Rubin’s hab-its. “We suggested basalt stones for the driveway,” Kozerski mentions, by way of example. “Then, as Rick thought about the idea, he started to notice them in other places on his travels and send us pictures.” The producer had never worked with architects before, and although the creative give-and-take was familiar territory, this time it was Rubin who was in the sound booth, with the designers at the controls. “There were certain elements of shock involved,” Rubin says. Originally, the house featured two kitchens; the archi-tects suggested removing the larger, more central one and renovating the smaller one off to the side. Rubin couldn’t see the reason for the change at first, but the new arrangement has since become one of his and Herrera’s favorite features. “It’s close,” says Herrera, “but it’s silent. No sound, no smells.”

The finished house is an unlikely mix of old and new, a series of contemporary spaces slipped delicately into the framework of the old Tudor. “One of the most important things we did to the outside was stealth it out,” says Kozerski, referring to the coat of ash-gray paint they added—though the half-timbered exterior, lattice windows and chimney pots are still plainly vis-ible. The real reinvention starts on the inside. On the first floor, the living and dining space has been entirely opened up, save for a brick fireplace sheltering Rubin’s listening room. A corridor to a deck is outfitted with a barrel-shaped sauna and an ice bath. On the level above, the architects have inserted a white square box, jutting out westward, that houses the master bed-room, which has floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ocean. Adjoining passageways lead to several terraces. It’s all composed in an understated medley of wood, concrete and white surfaces; a version of the epoxy floor that Rubin spotted in Manhattan found its way to Malibu, and it gives the house a spacey sort of beauty.

Cloistered and otherworldly as the house may feel, its owner is a five-minute drive from the hub of his work life: the legendary Shangri-La recording studio, made famous in The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s 1978 film about the Band. “It’s a magic place,” says the hip-hop artist Towkio, sitting surrounded by dials and switches in the Shangri-La control room. He’s just played a new track for Rubin, who nodded along, head down, eyes closed.

Rubin started holding recording sessions at Shangri-La long before he acquired the compound, attracted to the quality of audio that could be captured in its studio suite. As a bonus, it has a secondary record-ing space: Bob Dylan’s former tour bus, marooned in the backyard and repurposed with acoustical pad-ding. With its dreamy, spacious setting (artists don’t want to leave, Rubin says), Shangri-La is perfectly tai-lored to Rubin’s intensive, collaborative approach. “He always asks the important questions—about what’s essential, about what’s making something work,” says the Beastie Boys’ Mike D., whose house is just a few minutes away. An artistic fellow traveler since Rubin’s

NYU days, Mike D. describes the conditions back then, in the producer’s cinderblock dorm room, as “the opposite” of things now. “He had a P.A. crammed in there with a roommate’s bed, his turntables, a drum machine and boxes of records,” the musician recalls. “That’s the trajectory right there.” When Shangri-La came up for sale six years ago, with the threat of demo-lition looming over it, Rubin snapped it up. “I thought, If this studio goes away, it makes my life much more difficult,” he says.

When it came time to refurbish it, the new owner already had a perfect template—the house that he and his architects had been reinventing for years. Rubin has applied an ad hoc version of Bonetti/Kozerski’s soft-touch minimalism over at Shangri-La, pulling out many of the rugs that once covered the floor and put-ting up pale wooden walls around the recording room. Traveling from Rubin’s home to Shangri-La, one has the odd sensation of arriving precisely in the place one just left, with the stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway between the two seeming like a long, serene corridor inside a big, serene house.

I PLAY MUSIC all day,” Rubin says. There are speakers in nearly every room of his home (including the sauna space), but the first-floor alcove is where the producer does his most focused listening, reviewing fresh tracks piped in uncompressed from Shangri-La.

With his architects present, Rubin plays a song by a new collaborator, the rapper Mikey Mike. Rubin has added a chorus of singing children, which seems, for a new father, a deeply personal gesture.

Listening to songs is as close to work as anything Rubin does here, the rest of the home reflecting a com-mitment to self-care that, along with Herrera, has helped Rubin become a great deal healthier than he was back in the days of the Beastie Boys and “Fight for Your Right to Party.” In Malibu, Mike D. notes, his old friend has “made a point to focus on things that illuminate his life as much as possible.” After a long day in the stu-dio, favored collaborators are sometimes invited back to the house to sweat it out in the spa (Frank Ocean is a repeat guest). A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since the age of 14, Rubin uses the various terraces for his morning spiritual exercises. “I bring a stillness to the collaborations that I do,” says Rubin, “and this house is sort of stillness central.”

Of course, there’s a lot of care and effort behind all this simplicity. When Rubin arrives at the slop-ing Shangri-La site, his car (a large Tesla minivan) is turned around by one of his assistants so that he can easily drive back down the hill; back at the house, another assistant spot-cleans the area around the table where Rubin and Herrera will sit to dinner. Bonetti and Kozerski have been at work childproof-ing the mostly banisterless and doorless interiors. But having finally found the right formula for his style of life, Rubin doesn’t plan on many further tweaks.

“Kanye keeps changing his house,” he says, refer-ring to one of his recent collaborators. “At some point, if you have more ideas, then maybe they’re for a differ-ent house. Each house doesn’t have to be everything. It’s like an album.” Malibu, Rubin says, needs no filler tracks, no A&R-man hype: “It absolutely casts the spell every time I wake up.” •

NEXT STEPS The staircase leading to the second floor of Rubin’s house.

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